The Proud Wife (7 page)

‘Ready?' he asked, his tone as relaxed as if they were just about to go out on some casual lunch-date or afternoon trip somewhere.

‘Ready,' Marina echoed, knowing there was no way she could match that careless manner.

‘Ready' was exactly the opposite of the way she felt. And
there was no way that she was ready for whatever Pietro could have in store for her.

He might act calm and easy-going, but she had no doubt that there was so much more, something far darker and more dangerous than the pleasant mask he was letting her see.

Her unexpected move to declare she wanted nothing from this divorce but her freedom had thrown him at first, wrong-footing him in front of witnesses. And experience had taught her that no one caught out Pietro D'Inzeo like that, not with impunity.

He would want to make sure he regained the upper hand as quickly as possible. And Marina knew that that was exactly what he planned.

What she didn't know was what he meant to do once he had it.

T
HE
rain had slightly eased by the time they approached the main door of the hotel, the name of which Marina had grudgingly given him. Frowning through the water-lashed windscreen, Pietro found that he didn't know whether irritation or an amused acknowledgement of Marina's fiercely stubborn spirit was uppermost in his mind when he saw where she had stayed the previous night.

It was worse than he remembered, he acknowledged, noting the shabby paintwork and the worn stone steps. It might be in the historical centre of the city, close to the Massimo Theatre, but that was about all it had going for it. Which left him wondering just why she had determined on choosing this particular place when she could have been much more comfortable elsewhere.

She should have been so much more comfortable. He would have footed the bill, and she knew that. Which of course, knowing Marina, he reflected wryly, was precisely why she had done the exact opposite of what he had suggested.

And that brought him back to his suspicions as to just why she was behaving this way. Did she really want absolutely nothing out of their marriage? Or was she just playing a provocative game, aiming for some other sort of prize?

If she truly wanted nothing at all from him, then why hadn't she initiated the divorce herself sooner? Or was it the arrival of this man Stuart in her life that had changed everything? Pietro's frown darkened into a scowl and his hand tightened on the wheel until the knuckles showed white.

‘We're here.'

It was the first time that Marina had spoken since they had left Matteo's offices. She had perched herself on her seat, head upright, back stiffly straight, knees pressed tightly together. She had put her black leather handbag on her knee and held it there as if it was some sort of security blanket on to which she was clinging for dear life.

She had stared straight ahead, green eyes focused out beyond the windscreen, the silent barriers of defence closing around her until he felt totally locked out. Well, that was something he was used to. She didn't even need locked doors to close him out.

The creamy purity of her elegant profile with its long, straight nose and high, slanting cheekbones could have been carved from alabaster, it was so distant and unresponsive. Yet somehow that very purity made a disturbingly sensual kick straight below his belt so that he had a hard job concentrating on driving through the busy, narrow streets in the inclement weather conditions.

It was the rush of blood downwards in his body that brought a sudden clarity and a cold, controlled determination to his rational mind. He was damned if he was going to let her dance back into his life and then waltz right out of it again. If there was one thing that kiss in his lawyer's office had taught him, it was that he still wanted her—physically, if not emotionally. And that was the one thing he was going to act on.

He was sure that he could persuade her that it was what
she wanted too. Her response to that kiss had been so open, so revealing, so deliciously sensual, that he knew she felt just as he did, though she would go through all the fires in hell before she would ever admit the truth. But if he let her out of the car and into the hotel then what was to stop her disappearing straight into her room and not coming out again? She might call a taxi round to the back of the building and head for the airport before he could do anything.

His attention was caught by a flurry of movement near the hotel door, a gathering of people far too close to the steps that led into the foyer. He didn't need to see the cameras, the microphones, to know exactly who they were. He had enough experience of being hounded by the paparazzi to recognise them instantly.

Somehow the news had got out that Principe Pietro D'Inzeo's errant wife had come back home, temporarily at least, and already the press pack was scenting blood. The fact that Marina had been staying in such a downmarket hotel would have only whetted their appetites for the potential scandal behind the facts.

‘I said, we're here,' she added more sharply when he made no response. ‘This is my hotel.' One hand waved in the direction of the dilapidated building.

‘I am aware of that.'

Now at last her auburn head turned in his direction, and out of the corner of his eye he caught the look she flashed him in reproach as he didn't make a move to turn the car towards the kerb.

‘Then would you please slow down and… You can park just here.
Pietro!
'

The furious emphasis on his name reminded him of just how wildly impulsive and unpredictable his wife could be. He had once had cause to be glad of it because her impulsiveness had rushed her into his arms, into his bed,
before either of them had really had time to think. But right now, in this particular situation, he had no wish to risk her taking matters into her own hands and trying to escape. Stretching out a hand, he pressed the control that implemented the central locking, hearing it click smoothly into place in the same moment that Marina's breath hissed in swiftly through her clenched teeth as she realised exactly what he had done.

‘Just what the blazes are you playing at?'

‘No game,' he assured her. ‘Believe me,
carina
, this is no game. I never play where such things are concerned.'

‘What sort of things?' she questioned sharply, tugging at the door, trying vainly to open it. ‘Let me out of here!'

‘No way.'

Pietro shook his dark head, sending a lock of black hair falling loosely over his forehead so that he had to toss it back with a swift, abrupt movement.

‘I said that we needed to talk—in private. And that's what we're going to do.'

‘We could have been private in the hotel.'

‘Oh, sure,' Pietro said scornfully. ‘With a couple of dozen scandal-hungry paparazzi waiting at the door ready to rip the flesh off your bones, if it would give them the best possible story for tomorrow morning's papers.'

‘The papar…' Marina twisted round, her hair flying as she struggled to look back. ‘They were there?'

A curt nod was all the response she got. It would help if he could get down the street more quickly, but the weather and the press of midday traffic meant that he had to crawl at a speed that made him clench his jaw, impatient to be at the end of the road and take the route to the coast.

‘I didn't see them.'

‘Then it's just as well I did,' he tossed at her. ‘Otherwise it would have been like feeding a lamb to the wolves.'

‘Oh, come on!' Marina protested. ‘They wouldn't have been that interested—what is there for them to want to investigate? Only the fact that…'

The words faded from her tongue when she saw the look he turned in her direction, the blaze of something dangerous in the darkness of his eyes.

‘Only the fact that the Principessa D'Inzeo has unexpectedly returned to the island after fleeing from her husband's home after less than a year of marriage.' Dark anger sizzled along the words, mirroring the burn of his gaze. ‘And the chance to dig about again in the grubby details of the past and the way that the marriage that had seemed so perfect suddenly crashed and burned so dramatically.'

‘Oh…'

‘They never did manage to find out what went wrong a couple of years ago.'

Pietro steered the car round a tight corner.

‘So now they would enjoy building it up into the worst possible scandal they can manage.'

‘But there isn't…'

Marina couldn't finish the sentence. Just the thought of the paparazzi and the reporters digging around in her private life made her throat close up over anything she wanted to say.

‘Like I said,' Pietro drawled. ‘Throwing a lamb to the wolves… And you thought that I should just stop, park the car and let you walk right into the middle of it?'

How did he manage to do that? Marina wondered. How did he manage to wrong-foot her so easily, leaving her feeling gauche and naive, like some fish very much out of water, gasping for breath in the alien air of his world that was so very, very different from her own.

That made her still again as another even more disturb
ing thought came to her. One she should have considered before but hadn't actually done so.

‘Did they hound you like this before—when I left?'

This time the look he turned on her was cool with cynicism.

‘What did you expect?'

Marina wasn't sure if it was the bleakness of his tone or her own memories that made her shiver. She knew how the papers and celebrity magazines had been fascinated by their relationship, the hasty marriage. And she also couldn't forget the way that, whatever else he had done, Pietro had always done his very best to protect her from the prying lenses, the intrusive questions.

‘I'm sorry.'

She could barely manage it through the sudden thickness in her throat. She knew how hard he fought to keep his personal life private, how he had always hated the way that the press intruded into everything he did. He must have loathed the blazing spotlight that her flight from their marriage had brought to focus on it even more.

‘For bringing them to my door? They would have been here anyway.'

‘Not just for that. But for never thanking you for the way you took them on when I miscarried—and again when I left.'

She knew only too well that her unexpectedly gentle treatment at the time had been a result of Pietro making a careful statement to the press and so drawing attention to himself instead of her. Then he had placed himself like a shield between her and the paparazzi, acting, in public at least, like the concerned husband he wasn't in private. He had always known how to put on the public mask, the one that spending so long in the celebrity columns had taught him to wear as second nature.

So the curious reporters, the persistent paparazzi, saw only the brutal control, the calm front he presented to them. Not that it was very much different behind the walls of the
castello
. He had been so emotionless, so unresponsive, that she had felt like kicking out at him. Anything to make him react. To have him say that he was at least disappointed.

When she'd challenged him with that at the time, he'd turned to her, face blank, eyes opaque.

‘Disappointed?' he'd returned. ‘Hell, yes, I'm disappointed. I thought there was going to be an heir to the estate.'

‘And that's all? That's all you care about?'

‘No.' He'd shaken his dark head, totally closed off from her. ‘I'm disappointed that we have ended up in this situation when we could have waited—I should have waited.'

She should have held back, should never have asked the question. But she hadn't been able to bite her tongue, and so she had blurted it out.

‘Why didn't you wait?'

‘Is it not obvious? You were pregnant. If we had waited much longer, the world would have known. It was damage limitation.'

Something had died inside her then. Some part of her heart had closed off and she had shut herself away, hiding in her room to protect herself from the pain. Her actions had driven Pietro even further from her. He hadn't even troubled to hide it. And she hadn't been able to bring herself to care.

‘If they get wind of the divorce now,' Pietro warned her, ‘then they will be like hounds after a rat and will delight in hunting down any sordid, dirty detail they can find.'

‘Why now? I mean…'

She couldn't finish the sentence but the quick, flashing glance Pietro turned on her held no question in it. His
immediate response showed that he had understood exactly what she had not been able to say.

‘Why ask for a divorce now? Is it not obvious?'

Not to me.
She shook her head roughly, still having trouble with the words, and she tried to focus her eyes hard on the view beyond the windscreen where the buildings were now thinning out; the outskirts of Palermo giving way to the green of the countryside. She was afraid that if she let him see her face he would read in her expression the memory of all the days she had waited and hoped. The long hours when she had dreamed, yearned—prayed—that in spite of everything Pietro would come after her. That he would come to find her and…

No.
Desperately she pushed the weak thoughts aside. Pietro had never come for her. Had never made contact except for that one cold-blooded phone call, the one where he had said—had demanded—that she come back to Sicily now to talk about their marriage. That if she didn't then he would know what to think.

‘It seemed like the right time. I have duties to the family—the estate. I still need to provide an heir and my mother would like to be a
nonna
before she is much older.'

‘To a grandchild with a mother she can approve of,' Marina added with a touch of bitterness.

A sidelong glance at the man at her side told her that he was well aware of the significance of her remark.

‘My mother only felt that way because she believed that you had trapped me into marriage. I pointed out to her that it takes two to make a baby.'

Unexpectedly and uncharacteristically, Pietro misjudged the change of gears and the resulting crunching sound made Marina jump. But he adjusted the movement swiftly and steered the vehicle round another steep curve.

‘She would have come round in time—if the child had been born.'

Another person who had felt that she would have been acceptable if only she had produced that important D'Inzeo heir, Marina reflected. Pietro's mother had not been an easy woman to get to know, and when Marina had lost the baby the older woman had withdrawn from her and had barely spoken.

‘Does she have a suitable candidate in mind?'

‘Several,' Pietro told her dryly, his mouth twisting on the word. ‘Marriage to one of them will almost console her for the fact that my first marriage is ending in divorce.'

Marina winced sharply at the stab of pain his words inflicted on her. ‘My first marriage': that was her summed up and dismissed in one short phrase. Done and dusted, put to one side.